I stop at the familiar door with the obsidian seal.

His secret. The one line I’m not meant to cross. My heart kicks behind my ribs as I stare at the mark carved into the center of the door. It’s pulsing red, like a fresh wound.

It’s fitting, in a vicious sort of way, that he’ll wake up and find his precious door open. One final “fuck you” to the god who unmade me.

So I twist the handle. Power crackles along my skin as I step over the threshold.

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39

EVANDER

THE SUNLIGHT SLANTING across the sheets wakes me—or maybe it’s the silence where Bryony’s heartbeat should be.

I was so wrong. When I said you were just like Alexios? Turns out, you’re actually worse.

I’m proud of her, honestly. I could have given excuses about lying to my brother. That I was only trying to sell him on my typical depravity, my well-documented history of impulsivity and immortal boredom. Dressed it up in pretty words and reassurances like I wasn’t still planning to shove the knife into her.

But I am, and she deserved the opportunity to scream at me and remind me what a greedy fuck I am. And when she made me beg for it, I deserved that, too. That pointed reminder that I might be the god, but she holds the real power here.

I stare up at the roses stretching along the ceiling, studying the pulsing, vibrant color of their blooms. The roses have been whispering about her all week. Their thorns stretch toward her whenever she passes, like they’re trying to snare her, keep her. She babies them like my mother did, and now the realm is showing me how pleased it is.

Go to her, you idiot.

I shove into a pair of loose trousers, not bothering with a shirt. Her scent pulls me down the corridor like an invisible chain, but it doesn’t lead me to her room. Not where I expect her to be.

The door at the end of the hall is open, and the obsidian seal is pulsing red against the dark wood.

She didn’t. She wouldn’t.

But she did.

I shoulder into the chamber, incandescent with fury. With old hurts wrenched viciously into the light.

She stands beneath the twisting canopy of the chamber’s ancient tree. The black branches rise thirty feet toward the domed skylight, covered with leaves the color of dried blood. The thick trunk is carved with the deep gouges of my dagger.

And wrapped around the tree are roses. Winding up the trunk and every branch, crawling along the walls. I stopped coming in here when they began to overtake the tree, a pointed message from the realm to its chosen king.

This grief is making you waste away. You’re squandering your power.

Bryony turns. The stained glass above paints her in shades of violet and cobalt, catching on her opalescent skin and silver-white hair. Her expression shifts—an apology and something softer. Something that hooks into my withered excuse for a heart and twists until I’m carved open, and the only word between my teeth is please.

“You had no right,” I snarl. “I made one rule—one damn rule in this tower.”

She flinches, but she doesn’t retreat. Running would be too easy, too simple for a woman who seems determined to court destruction.

“I know. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have…” She swallows hard. “But why hide this? It’s… beautiful. I thought I’d find—”

“What?” I snap, stalking closer. My bare feet sink into the packed earth I’d gathered from Turpori’s wreckage. “Preserved corpses? Trophy rooms filled with the remains of my enemies? Some sick collection to confirm what a monster I am?” A laugh scrapes out of me. “Sorry to shatter your illusions, Princess, but even I’m not that predictable.”

“That’s not what I—”

“Save it.” Power crackles beneath my skin. She has to feel it—the static charge, the sting of barely leashed magic—but she doesn’t back down. “You wanted to see the darkest parts of me? Fine. Let me give you the grand tour.”

I drag my knuckles down the pitted trunk. “This is a griefwood. They’re grown in Scillarian households as an extension of the mourning process. Watered by the tears and blood of the bereaved, fed by the corpses tangled in its roots. They’re living headstones. This one once sat in the courtyard of my mother’s palace. I carved every mark myself in the days after her court fell. Each one symbolizes someone I lost.”

And each gouge is a wound that will never heal.

“There are so many.” A broken whisper.

A tightness spreads through my chest. “What did you expect? You’re standing on a mass grave.”

I watch the knowledge settle in her expression—the parting of her lips, the clench of her fingers.

“You asked me once how humans managed to kill so many gods,” I say. “Well, Devaliant, here are the mechanics of deicide. Pay attention because I’m only going to say this once.”

I crook my finger beneath her chin, tilting her face to meet my stare. She shivers but doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t look away as the air thickens with the rising swell of my power, the electric thrum of it.

“First,” I say softly, “you take a very special blade. A godkiller forged by an Eternal gifted with the power of metallurgy and imbued with their magic. Then, you set it right between our wings, where the skin is soft. Where we’re weak.”

Her breathing goes ragged and her pulse flutters against my fingertips, but she holds my gaze as I lean in and breathe my next words into the charged space between our mouths.

“And then you start sawing.”

She makes a noise like I’ve struck her.

“Shh, don’t flinch now. You wanted this, remember?” My lips brush the shell of her ear. “Let me tell you what your sick fucking family did to my brother. His wings were kissed by starlight once. Our mother used to say that the realm had taken its time crafting them. And your ancestors pinned him to a table and laughed while they carved him up.”

I swallow past the lump in my throat. Force myself to keep going. “Wings are the one thing even an Eternal can’t regenerate. Did you know that? It nearly killed me to craft him a replacement out of shadows. There’s a deadland a hundred miles wide in the Duehavn from the power it took to make my brother whole again. But do you want to know the real reason your family mutilated him?”

I pull back just far enough to search her stricken face. To watch the awful knowledge bleed into her expression. “Consumption, sweetheart,” I say. “When humans ingest our flesh, they steal our magic for a little while. They take what we have because they want it for themselves.”

Her hands cover her mouth. Bryony makes a wounded sound, fresh tears spilling over.

“When Bas and I made it back to Turpori, it was just smoking rubble and rotting bodies. Your family and their legion used Bas’ power to put down our people like animals. We found what was left of our mother scattered through the throne room.” I choke out a broken laugh. “I’m sure Vartena spun it real nice in the history books. The Godkiller Crusades, right? That’s what they call it? But here in Scillari, it’s the Devouring. And that’s what it was. Our bodies consumed until the dead outnumbered the living.”

I’m breathing hard, panting. The words spill faster, harsher. Tumbling over each other. “That kind of loss destroys you,” I rasp. “It fills you up with poison until all you know how to do is spread it.” I drag in a shuddering breath, and it hurts. Fuck, it hurts. “Bas and I almost destroyed half of Scillari in our grief. Alexios had to bind our power—but he promised us justice. At that point, I didn’t care who handed me the knife, as long as it wound up in a Devaliant’s ribs.”